Anhydrous - "Without water" - transesterification of Biodiesel must be an anhydrous process or funny things happen. Water in the vegetable oil causes either no reaction or cloudy Biodiesel, and water in lye or methanol renders it less useful or even useless, depending on how much water is present. Either let your vegetable oil settle for 2-3 days before using and drain the water off the bottom, or heat the oil and boil off the water. Store lye and methanol in separate, air-tight containers.
Biodiesel - An environmentally safe, low polluting fuel for most diesel internal combustion and turbine engines. Can be mixed with petroleum diesel fuel and stored anywhere petroleum is. Made from fresh or waste vegetable oils (triglycerides) that are a renewable energy source. Both commercially and privately made around the world. Relatively safe and easy to process when conscientiously approached. Benefits are substantially reduced engine emissions, even with as small a blend as 20% Biodiesel with 80%petroleum diesel.
Blending vegetable oils with petro diesel - A number of methods exist to blend vegetable oil with petro diesel and create a low viscosity fuel oil with similar properties to diesel. One such method results in a product called AGTANE and this is the result of mixing recycled Yellow Grease with hydrogen in the presence of steam, later blended with heavy diesel oil.
Bubble Wash - A method of final washing of Biodiesel through air agitation. Biodiesel floats above a quantity of water. Bubbles from an aquarium air pump and air stone can be sued to injected air into the water causing the bubbles to rise. At the water/Biodiesel interface, the air bubbles carry water up through the Biodiesel by surface tension. Simple diffusion causes water soluble impurities in the Biodiesel to be extracted into the water. As the bubble reaches the surface and breaks, the water is freed and percolates back down through the Biodiesel again.
Cetane Number - Measure of fuel ignition characteristics. Like the octane number used for gasoline, the higher the value, the better the fuel performance. A higher cetane number correlates with improved combustion, improved cold starting, reduced noise, white smoke, HC, CO and particulate emissions particularly during early warm-up phase. The EPA uses this parameter as a measure of aromatic content in fuel. Typical Cetane numbers around the world are as follows: Europe: 43 - 57, average 50 U.S. lower, minimum 40, average 43.
Cloud point - The temperature at which the first wax crystals appear and a standardized ASTM test protocol is used to determine this temperature.
Colloid - A stable system of small particles dispersed in something else. A multi-phase system in which one dimension of a dispersed phase is of colloidal size. Colloids are the liquid and solid forms of aerosols, foams, emulsions, and suspensions within the colloidal size class. Milk and smoke are both colloids. Colloidal size is typically .001 micron to 1 micron in any dimension. Dispersions where the particle size is in this range are referred to as colloidal aerosols, colloidal emulsions, colloidal foams, or colloidal suspensions.
Dispersion - A stable or unstable system of fine particles, larger than colloidal size, evenly distributed in a medium.
Emulsification - to emulsify or to form an emulsion.
Emulsion - A suspension of small drops of 1 liquid in a 2nd with which the 1st will not mix. Emulsions can be formed either by mechanical agitation, or by chemical processes. Unstable emulsions will separate with time or temperature. Stable emulsions will not separate.
Esters - Any of a large group of organic compounds formed when an acid and alcohol is mixed. CH3COOCH3 (Methyl acetate) is the simplest ester. Biodiesel contains methyl stearate.
Ethanol - Ethyl alcohol - C2H5OH - CH3-CH2-OH. A good solvent and the trade name of an alcohol based gasoline replacement.
Glycerin - The major byproduct of Biodiesel production. CH2-OH--CH-OH--CH2-OH - Each of the "OH" sites is one of the three places where an ester is broken off of the triglyeride molecule (veg. oil).
Gum Number - The measure of the tendency of a fuel to form gums via oxidation.
Iodine # - Standard natural oil assay to measure the degree of unsaturation (or the number of double bonds present) in vegetable oils and fats.
KOH - Potassium Hydroxide, which is used to make Biodiesel from ethanol, a metalic base (acid)
Methanol - Methyl Alcohol - CH3OH - Good solvent and a component of gasohol. Burned in top fuel eliminator dragsters and toy airplane engines. Lethal if consumed. Used to make methoxide in Biodiesel production. Methanol absorbs water from the air and only methanol which is known to be dry (anhydrous) or is 99.9% pure should be used in Biodiesel production.
Methoxide - Sodium Methoxide - Sodium Methylate - (CH3-O+ Na-). An organic salt, in pure form a white powder. In biodiesel production, "methoxide" is a product of mixing methanol and sodium hydroxide, yielding a solution of sodium methoxide in methanol, and a significant amount of heat. Sodium Methoxide in methanol is a liquid that kills nerve cells before you can feel the pain. If you ever come into contact with it, rinse with water and seek medical attention immediately, it is also highly explosive and making the sodium methoxide mix is the most dangerous step when making Biodiesel.
Micro Emulsion - Arthur Schwab and Everett Pryde filed a patent # 4,451,267 in 1984 that outlined quite a promising vegetable oil refining method. This method claimed a Biodiesel like fuel could be made from refining vegetable oil with micro-emulsions. The fuel is a micro-emulsion in which water and alcohol are dispersed in the oil by means of a trialkylamine in either a detergent or detergent-less surfactant system.
NaOH - Sodium Hydroxide, lye, caustic soda (Red Devil Drain Cleaner). A metallic base. Strongly alkaline and extremely corrosive. Mixing with fluids usually causes heat, and can create enough heat to ignite flammables (such as methanol), so add slowly. "anhydrous sodium hydroxide" is one of the main reactants in the manufacturing process. Anhydrous means it's dry, and water turns biodiesel into soap, so this product needs to be stored in an airtight container to prevent NaOH from absorbing water and CO2 from the air.
Pyrolysis - The Pyrolysis cracking vegetable oil method uses heat and pressure to change the nature of vegetable oil. The Pyrolysis refining process does produce reduced viscosity oil and an acceptable diesel fuel replacement.
Pour point - The temperature at which the fuel is no longer pumpable.
pH - A measure of acidity and alkalinity of a solution on a scale with 7 representing neutrality. Lower numbers indicate increasing acidity, and higher numbers increasing alkalinity. Each unit of change represents a tenfold change in acidity or alkalinity. pH is mathematically found by taking the negative logarithm of the effective hydrogen-ion concentration or hydrogen-ion activity. The units are gram equivalents per liter of the solution. The optimal pH for BioDiesel is 7 or neutral as distilled water and most tap water.
Rape Seed - Rape Seed Oil - Food grade oil produced from rape seed is called Canola in North America. Canola is a name taken from "Canada oil" due to the fact that much of the development of the oil was performed in Canada. Another early term for this oil is Colza and is a good feedstock for Biodiesel.
Saponification - The reaction of an ester with a metallic base and water, i.e. the making of soap.
Soy - Soy Oil, a vegetable oil pressed from soy beans.
Soy Diesel - A marketing term for Biodiesel made from Soy Beans, and is used to highlight the renewable nature of Biodiesel.
SVO - Straight Vegetable Oil. Burns well in many diesels, but does not start engine, and will coke in the injectors as a hot engine cools. A separate tank of petroleum diesel or Biodiesel is often used during starting and stopping engine, and an electric valve allows transfer to the SVO tank.
Thermal depolymerization - A company called Changing the World has come up with a process called Thermal depolymerization to convert carbon based feed stocks into oil and other useful materials. This process super-hydrates material, so temperatures and pressures need only be modest, because water helps to convey heat into the feedstock.
Titration - Applied to BioDiesel, titration is the act of determining the acidity of a sample of WVO by the dropwise addition of a known base to the sample while testing with pH paper for the desired neutral pH=7 reading. The amount of base needed to neutralize an amount of WVO determines how much base to add to the entire batch.
Transesterfication - Process of creating esters from vegetable oil (a triglyceride), and sodium methoxide. Products are Glycerin, Methyl Stearate, Methyl Oleate, Methyl Linoleate (assuming soy oil is used).
Viscosity - Is a measure of how a liquid is resistant to flow; "thickness" or "thinness". Methanol has a low viscosity, while vegetable oil has a high viscosity.
WVO - Waste Vegetable Oil.
